Her Scent
by New Guinee
Summary: Oneshot One thing that draws Usui impossibly to Misaki...


What intrigues Usui most is her scent.

She doesn't smell of flowers, fruits or any other appealing perfume. Sometimes it seems a bit spicy, like pepper, but a second whiff of it would make one think it actually has a sweeter edge to it, as honey does. Then one can feel the salty body of the scent, maybe sweat or soil, but it doesn't have the unappealing properties of such substances. Bread, chocolate, coffee and every other scent will smell shallow in comparison to this unfamiliar, multi-layered smell. Usui could probe at it for hours and be unable to label it properly.

It's strange, how one can't put a name to it.

But it isn't faint, by any means. The first time Usui noticed the demon president's scent was when he passed her in the halls. He heard the everyday shout of said president, yelling about decency and the girls being scarred for life at a half-naked boy scrambling down the stairs. Passing by, Usui smelled such a strong scent he stopped in his tracks. He turned around to identify it. He saw Misaki.

It was…fierce. It ensnared the mind of the person who sensed it and demanded full attention. It lingered for a long time, in both nose and mind, like how one wouldn't be able to get rid of the odor after being in a room full of garlic for an hour.

But not in the way garlic stinks.

Her scent was positively alluring. Usui was haunted by it for weeks.

Then, while going home through a narrow alley one evening, he smelled it again. He turned, sure it was the same one he had detected at school.

He saw his dear school president taking out the trash, dressed in a maid outfit.

From that day, he took to teasing her, making her flustered with perverted remarks and suggestive smiles because that scent would get stronger when she blushed and yelled at him. Whenever she got near enough to scream at him about being a perverted outer space alien, the scent would hit his nose again. It kept him awake at night, thinking about the half-maid half-president in his dark apartment, which was comparatively bland and cold in scent.

Maybe his apartment smelled like himself: frigid, unremarkable, bland, bitter. Maybe his scent defined his own mediocre personality, hardly human. Was Misaki more human than he was? Or was he human, but her almost heavenly?

Once, he was so sure it couldn't possibly be a human's scent that he asked her if she used perfume. She laughed and said, "Where do I have the money to buy perfume? Even if I did, I'd use it on groceries, not on stupid cosmetics!"

So then he knew it was all hers, no artificial substances in the mix. Though he knew she wouldn't lie about such things, still, he couldn't believe that such an unreal smell could exist as a natural scent, and that as one of a human.

He smelled it on her neck when he playfully blew wind into her ear from behind her. He smelled it in her hair, the time he grabbed Misaki in the dark, pretending to be a rapist. He smelled it from her wrist, when she wiped off a butter stain on his cheek with her hand. He even smelled it from the Miyabigaoka uniform jacket he had taken from one of the guards when he had gone there to save her from Igarashi, the one he had lent her while going out the gates since all she had was a skimpy maid outfit on. (Yes, he still has it, in the far back of his closet, and he sometimes pulls it out just for the sake of remembering the bastard Igarashi's shock on him barging into his room.)

Sometimes he lost control and hugged her, touched her, even kissed her once on the school roof because the scent called to him, beckoning him to come near. When she pushed him away and avoided him, Usui felt ashamed of himself for sinking so low, doing things to her, intimate things that only lovers could do to each other, without her permission. He tried to stay away.

But that beautiful, addicting scent of hers pulled him closer towards her. It drew him to her like, as cliché as it sounds, a moth to a flame. And suddenly, Usui noticed he wasn't only attracted to her smell, but millions of other tiny details that defined her: how she flicked her wrist when she talked about things she was bored with, how her eyebrows scrunched together when she concentrated on an especially challenging math problem, how she jerked her chin upwards when she faced someone. Her whole being now radiated the same alluring power as her scent. He _couldn't_ stay away.

Usui knew that staying near her would not only hurt himself but also her in the end, but he found it impossible to resist the amazing pull she had on him. The moment he drew back, she would unknowingly pull him closer. It drove him crazy, this forbidden, wrong, but _intoxicating_ desire. And his fascination with her scent grew stronger every passing moment, as if it were his drug.

And when Misaki confessed to him in that Juliet outfit, her face approximately the shade of Seika High's school uniform ribbon, he was overwhelmed by the need to hold her, to pull her closer, just to get more of this addictive poison.

And when their fingers intertwined, when their eyes gazed into each other's, when her blush grew a shade darker and his face also displayed a faintly pink tinge, their faces parallel, him coming closer and closer until, finally, _finally_, their lips met, he felt more complete than he had in his life. Her scent, her warmth, her entire being came back to stimulate his senses again, deeper and more intriguing than he had ever known.

In a way, her scent is just like Misaki. Strong, commanding, alluring, haunting…

And all his.


End file.
